Relative Deprivation

The basic concept of relative deprivation is deceptively simple: persons may feel that they are deprived of some desired state or thing, in comparison with some standard, or with the real or imagined condition of other people. Discussions of relative deprivation often deal at one and the same time with a complex cluster of related concepts. Relative deprivation as a social condition refers exclusively to the fact that one social unit as compared with another has "more" of some variable, for example, income, prestige, safety, piety. Reactions of relative deprivation will have greatly different consequences depending on whether deprivation is conceived in fraternalistic or egoistic terms. Efforts to find strong effects from status incongruity as a factor in relative deprivations have been inconclusive. But one important set of processes does seem to involve both incongruity and relative deprivation as effective explanatory conditions.